Monkey Fist (FG Clay)

"I'm checking on Clay."
"Is that 407?" My Jason was already typing in the ID.
"477, UC-477," I corrected.
I thought for an instant I had overstepped, but the frustrated expression passed. Jason wasn't so bad. "Oh right, that makes more sense. I need to ask Cherry about 407. Clay is 477. Connie says the color scheme is in use, but it's only a yellow flag, so just stay nimble."
So 'Connie' still has it, I thought. "It's been five years, Jason, my contract is up for renewal. Can't I just have 477 back?"
This time there was no mistake. Jason was in no mood. "Connie has it. 477 is not your problem, and with your stats lately you shouldn't be away from your desk asking about other people's problems.
I was on break, but I decided it was as good an out as any. "Okay, sorry, Jason," I meekly replied. I could see by his face as I turned to go that he had half-decided to start an argument, so I quickly closed the door and hoped he would think about something else. I take it back, I thought: Jason it a fucking dick.
I took a circuitous route back to my desk, which consumed most of my break.
Cherry was at their station, right next to mine, working on the lighting around some model. "Did you get Clay back?"
"Still in limbo."

I had been talking about Clay at lunch yesterday, much like when I first brought it up years ago. Clay, also known as FG UC 477, was a project sitting in limbo, and had been nearly the entire time I had worked at Unleashed Creatives. A casualty of Connie's office chat parser, the tiny, malleable idea had been overheard, stamped with a yellow flag, and a week later was in my e-mail, already signed off for 'leisure development' with a trademark pending, and categorized as an advertisement, before I had even had an opportunity to name it.
It was a pretentious enough metaphor. I was recently graduated. As per the usual contract, UC had paid my tuition, and I was at the time not ungrateful. Buried in the NDAs, privacy policies, and terms of employment, however, was a galling notion of which I was dimly aware: theoretically, any creative idea I have during my initial contract period belongs to UC, to be done with as they see fit.
UC-477, "Clay," was little more than a lunchtime meditation on what little I thought I knew about dialectics. Speaking with Cherry where only me, them and evidently the parser could hear, and none of us well, I said something about the process of education being the student rising or reacting to meet the expectation and pressure of the program. The process of education meets the senses, the senses translate it into some manner of understanding, and the assimilation of what is taught is reshaped; but what is achieved is neither wholly the student, nor wholly the program, even with the best fit.
As I said, it was a pretentious baby of an idea, and not a very good one. Evidently one of the junior auditors liked it, though, stamped it, and sent it back so I could put in more effort. I was being given permission, in my own off-hours, to pursue this idea myself. How charitable of them, to take my idea without my knowledge and then kindly return it to me.
I hadn't worked on anything of my own in a month. I didn't want to work on anything, really, but I was failing to meet minimums. I needed more hours, and they were if anything going to cut my hours further at this rate. I especially didn't really want to work on Clay.
The seizure of a simple metaphor spoken in relative privacy between acquaintances, and the expectation that I turn it into something useful to the company, had become more than I could bear. I wasn't going to re-up with UC. I was under no obligation to do so. When I left, however, I planned to take Clay with me. And therein lay the problem. I had plugged away at UC-477 now and again over the years, as I had most of the ideas I had presented to the company. Some would be immediately returned to me for further development. Some would be summarily disapproved, bundled with a large collection of other concepts, languishing somewhere with my name and a date. That didn't much bother me, since many of those honestly were little more than spitballing, and the usual reasons included possible infringement.

"I want to do something with it after I leave."
Cherry shook their head. "Shouldn't have said that. Connie heard it. That's evidence of premeditation of infringement." I could never tell if Cherry was serious. In point of fact, Cherry once asked me if they're ever serious; I replied, "only when it's a matter of life or death." They seemed satisfied with that reply. Such was the case now. Cherry was sometimes terse, especially around the office, but what qualified as 'life or death' had, as far as I could discern, always been a difficult distinction for them.
"Would UC actually sue me for using an idea adjacent to Clay?"
"I'm no lawyer." They started rendering and turned away from their desk. "Could be. It's evidence, certainly. When the leak happened, all the logs were plain text format, apparently, just sitting around waiting to be read. It's been used in courts when the company was subpoenaed. The big sexual harassment class action suit, before the arbitration clause went into effect. Dragged their feet, but that was there, too. Now they just store the stuff Connie flags as creative. That and I suppose our drink and food orders." Connie was a wonder in that regard, I begrudgingly admit. You could order a sandwich a particular way once, ask what it was the next day, give it a name, and ask for it by name any time you wanted.
I checked my cell phone. "Break's over. Do you suppose they log every time we say Connie?" I turned back to my computer and started working on some other poor asshole's dreams.
"Probably. Connie, do you store every time we say Connie?" There was no reply. Cherry continued. "Connie, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. I got married to the widow next door, Connie'd been married seven times before, and every one was a Cherry." They paused, and still there was no reply. When I said Cherry is sometimes terse, I suppose that's a bit of a lie. If it was about music, politics, or the intersection of the two, it was difficult to shut them up.